I like that history, Ross. Fascinating. For a while there I was back in the Middle Ages, watching meat being cut up by bloody, dirty filthy hands (and knives I suppose), surrounded by the stench of open drains, lack of toilets, horses, pigs, etc... A very different time, eh? I'm old enough to rememb...

Yep, thanks for all that. It's very kind of you all. The situation sure does look pretty hopeless. Even the cold smoker is a bummer. I tested it today and it prefers to smoke out of the firepit rather than out of the pipe in the smokehouse... Seems to be three choices: 1. wet brine refrigerated cure...

Thanks Dartfrog, that's twice you given me some good information. I would like to know why you suggest a curing brine and why you are so pessimistic about it otherwise. I have failed to find anything definitive about this anywhere. Perhaps I should illustrate what I mean by melodramatic example agai...

The pig was butchered professionally. My description might have been lacking. You gotta remember I don't know where the answers are. I didn't even know today's questions until today. I have masses of webpages and forum posts and even that guy's book. I was kinda hoping someone would have been famili...

Yes, I'm mainly worried about this temperature business. I'll go right out and get ice. But what happens when we start hanging, smoking? It goes into the smokehouse and gets smoked for a while. Then people say it often hangs with no smoke for a while. Then you start up the smoke again. Like it might...

Hello Everyone.. and thanks for the interest in my query and the input. I've been doing as much googling around and reading and telephoning as I can and I've managed to get myself pretty confused and nervous. Talking to a guy on the phone this morning whom I want to buy some nitrate containing salti...

HI.. I am completely new. To the forum, to meat curing, to smoking. But I intend to cold smoke a pig. In chunks. Cut up into chunks maybe each as big as a thigh - a ham. To satisfy my wife who is Chinese and it was traditionally done there in her childhood. So we've got a smokehouse built. It is abo...